Deadly Road to Yuma (17 page)

“I said—” Garth began.

“I want my son with me.”

Gonzalez spoke up, saying, “The
niño
’s kind of a handful, Garth. We still got the husband to make sure she don’t try to trick us.”

Garth bristled. “I reckon you’ve forgot who’s givin’ the orders here.”

“I’m just saying that if you want me to cooperate and help you,” Maggie told him, “you have to give me what I want, too.”

Garth put a hand on the butt of his gun. “I could just shoot all three of you and be done with it.”

“And then you wouldn’t have anyone to spy for you,” Maggie pointed out. “I suppose one of you could ride into town and handle that chore, but you can’t be sure that Bodine or one of the others won’t spot you. They don’t know me, though.”

That wasn’t strictly true. She had met Matt Bodine—but he didn’t know her real name or that she had any connection to the outlaws who had been trying to free Joshua Shade.

“How about if I go ahead and kill your husband right now,” Garth said. “Gonzalez, go kill him if the lady doesn’t get on her horse and ride.”

“No, please,” Maggie cried. “I’ll go, just please don’t hurt Ike or my son.”

“Don’t worry.”

She did worry, though. That sense of fatalism still gripped her. They were all doomed, she thought. They had been ever since the outlaws had ridden up to the wagon. No one could change that.

But if anyone could, a tiny voice insisted in the back of her head, it was a man like Matt Bodine…

The rest of the night passed quietly in the livery barn. After they gave Shade his supper, he ranted and raved some inside the wagon, but eventually he dozed off. Matt, Sam, Thorpe, and Everett took turns sleeping, with at least two of them always awake and alert.

After breakfast the next morning, Thorpe told Matt, “Go down to the train station and find out if that clerk’s heard any more about when the trestle will be repaired. If he hasn’t, tell him to come up here and let us know as soon as he does hear anything.”

Matt nodded and tucked his Winchester under his arm. Sam and Everett followed him to the back door to guard it as they let him out.

Pancake Flats wasn’t any more exciting this morning than it had been the night before, Matt noted as he walked toward the depot. Probably the only time the place really woke up was when a train came through.

“Bodine!” a voice called from behind him.

Matt swung around, instinctively bringing up the rifle and dropping into a crouch. His finger eased on the trigger when he saw the portly figure of the local lawman. Marshal Lopez had come to an abrupt halt as Matt’s Winchester pointed at him, and now he backed off, hands up.

“Don’t shoot, Bodine,” Lopez said. “I didn’t mean to spook you!”

Matt relaxed. “What do you want, Marshal?”

“I heard about what happened last night, with Dub Branch and Court Wesley, I mean. Those hombres were good with their guns.”

“Not good enough,” Matt said. “You’re not thinkin’ about tryin’ to arrest me, are you, Marshal?”

“No, no,” Lopez said quickly. “Their amigos told me what happened, how Dub and Court were drunk and Dub tried to molest some woman. They said you gave ’em a chance to go on with nobody gettin’ hurt, but they slapped leather first.”

Matt nodded. “That’s the way it happened, all right.”

“I just thought I should warn you, even though you’re in the clear with the law, those boys had some hot-headed friends around here who might not see it that way. I ain’t sayin’ they’ll come after you, but, ah…just when were you plannin’ on leavin’?”

Lopez didn’t care what happened, as long as it didn’t happen in his town and he didn’t have to deal with the aftermath, Matt thought. He said, “That all depends on when the train comes through. I was on my way to the station to check on that now.”

Lopez took off his hat and scratched his head. “The sooner the better, I’m thinkin’.”

“Sooner will be fine with us, too, but it’s sort of out of our hands. We have to wait for that railroad repair crew to do its part.”

“I’ll walk with you, if that’s all right.”

Matt shrugged. “Suit yourself, Marshal.” As they fell in step alongside each other, he took the opportunity to ask, “You know a young woman named Jessica Devlin?”

“Devlin?” Lopez repeated with a frown. “I don’t think so. No Devlins around here as far as I know.”

That agreed with what Everett had told him the night before.

“She’s blond, early twenties, easy to look at,” Matt described her.

Lopez shook his head. “Still don’t ring no bells. Sorry, Bodine. Was she the woman Dub and Court were botherin’?”

“That’s right.”

“Must be new in town…although why a young, pretty woman would choose to come to a dusty, no-account place like this, I don’t know.”

Matt recalled how nervous Jessica Devlin had been, even after the gunfight. Something had driven her to Pancake Flats, he thought, and whatever it was, she was scared and unhappy about it.

Of course, it could be anything…man trouble, family problems, what have you. None of his business, he told himself. Just the sort of idle curiosity he would feel about any good-looking young woman, and now that he and Lopez had reached the train station, he put the matter out of his mind.

The same clerk was on duty at the ticket window, and when he saw Matt coming, he started shaking his head.

“Sorry, there hasn’t been any word this morning about the trestle,” he said before Matt could even ask.

“If you hear anything, the marshal wants you to come up to the livery stable and let us know.”

The clerk looked at Lopez. “Is that true, Marshal?”

“He means the other marshal,” Lopez explained. “The U.S. one. But I reckon it’d be a good idea if you do like he says, Harry.”

The clerk nodded. “All right, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my duties here. I work for the Southern Pacific Railroad, you know, not the U.S. marshal’s office.”

With that chore taken care of, Matt headed back to the livery stable. Sam let him in the back door, and he reported the bad news, or rather, the lack of news—which was pretty much the same thing.

“So we’re still stuck here,” Thorpe said. He glanced at the wagon, where Shade was quiet this morning. “If I wasn’t a lawman, I’d open that door and put a bullet in that monster’s head. That would settle things. The longer it takes us to get him to Yuma, the greater the chances of him escaping justice somehow.”

“It’ll catch up to him sooner or later, no matter what happens here,” Sam said.

“In the next world, you mean?” Thorpe asked with a suggestion of a sneer in his voice. “I don’t know what happens there, Two Wolves. All I know for sure is what happens here and now, and the law says Shade’s got to hang.”

“Sometimes prisoners get shot tryin’ to escape,” Matt said.

“You wouldn’t solve the problem that way, though, would you, Bodine?”

Matt grunted and shook his head. “I reckon not. Not unless Shade was really gettin’ away. Then I wouldn’t hesitate to ventilate him.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Sam said. “Maybe the trestle will be repaired and the train will be here later today.”

They all hoped that was true…but the worried looks on their faces said that they would believe it when they saw it with their own eyes.

Late that afternoon, a knock sounded on one of the big double doors at the front of the stable.

Instantly, the four men inside the barn were fully alert and ready for trouble. Holding the shotgun poised in his hands, Marshal Thorpe went to the doors and called, “Who’s there?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he stepped quickly aside, just in case somebody tried to blast a rifle slug through the doors. They were made of thick, heavy wood, but they might not stop a bullet from a Winchester like the adobe walls would.

“It’s Lopez,” came the reply. “Open up. I got to talk to you.”

The voice of the local lawman sounded strained. Thorpe turned his head and exchanged glances with Matt and Sam. It was possible that Lopez had been captured by the gang and was being forced to cooperate with them at gunpoint.

Thorpe said to Everett in a low voice, “Get over there by the wagon. If anybody busts in here, stick a six-gun through the window and empty it. I’d rather see Shade hang, but they’re not taking him out of here.”

Everett didn’t look like he relished being given the job of executioner, but he drew his pistol and held it ready. Matt and Sam spread out, one on each side of the doorway, and leveled their rifles.

“Are you alone, Lopez?” Thorpe asked.

“
Sí,
Marshal. You have my word.”

Matt didn’t see why they should accept Lopez’s word about anything, since they hadn’t know the man for even twenty-four hours yet and he hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to help them. But sooner or later, you had to trust
somebody
, he supposed.

Or maybe not, because Thorpe stepped closer to the door and said, “Anything you want to tell us, you can do it through the door. Is the train coming?”

“Not yet. Tomorrow maybe, Harry says. But this is about something else. More trouble.”

“Just want we needed,” Matt said under his breath.

“Go on,” Thorpe urged.

“The word’s gotten around town that you got Joshua Shade locked up in there. Some folks are gettin’ worked up about the reward.”

“Reward?” Thorpe repeated with a puzzled frown. “There’s no more reward. Shade’s already been convicted and sentenced to hang.”

“That’s what I mean,” Lopez said. “Somebody started a rumor that Shade’s gang will pay a thousand dollars to anybody who kills you four and sets him free.”

Thorpe didn’t seem to be the sort of man who surprised easily, but his eyes widened at that news. Matt and Sam glanced at each other, and the faces of the blood brothers were grim. This bounty on their scalps was an added complication they sure as hell didn’t need.

“Someone from the gang must have slipped into town unnoticed and started spreading that rumor,” Sam said quietly.

“They’re tired of gettin’ shot up, so they’re tryin’ to bribe somebody else into doin’ their dirty work for them,” Matt said.

Thorpe nodded in agreement with the theory. He called to Lopez, “What are you going to do about this?”

“Me?” The word came from Lopez in a plaintive yelp. “I can’t do anything. Some of the cowboys in the saloon were already gettin’ likkered up because they were mad about Bodine shootin’ Dub and Court. I told you that was maybe gonna happen, Bodine.”

“It’s your job to put a stop to it,” Matt called.

“I can’t stop a whole mob of loco cowboys,” Lopez protested. “And now it’s just gonna be worse because of that bounty the gang put on your heads. I’m sorry, amigos, but the town don’t pay me enough to get my ass shot off. I’m ridin’ out.”

“You’re just going to leave and let all hell break loose?” Thorpe demanded, sounding as if he couldn’t believe that any lawman would do such a thing.

“I got no choice,” Lopez whined. “I got a family, a wife, and a bunch of kids. If I’m dead, who’s gonna take care of them?”

“Let him go, Marshal,” Sam advised. “I don’t think he’d be much help anyway, even if he stayed and tried to stop the mob.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Thorpe raised his voice. “All right, Lopez! Run out on us if that’s what you want to do! Keep running long enough and far enough and maybe you can forget what you did here.”

“You can shame me all you want, mister. At least, I’ll still be alive to feel ashamed.”

And with that, Lopez left. They all heard his boots scuffing away in the street.

“Every time we think things can’t get any worse, they find a way, don’t they?” Matt said. “Now probably half the town wants to kill us, and the other half will be too scared to do anything about it.”

Thorpe grimaced and took off his hat. He scrubbed a hand over his face wearily. As he replaced his hat, he said, “If we stay here, they’ll bust down the door and get in. We can’t hold off that many men forever…or even for as long as it takes that damned train to get here.”

“Well, it seems like there’s only one solution,” Sam said.

The others all looked at him and waited for him to go on.

“We don’t stay here,” Sam said.

Garth thought it was a good idea, and for once Jeffries and Gonzalez seemed to agree with him. Not that he really cared what they thought, but they had wormed their way into being his lieutenants, sort of, and he knew things would go better if they supported what he wanted to do.

Maggie Winslow had ridden out in the middle of the day, bringing the news that the trestle still wasn’t repaired, but might be by the next morning.

“The clerk at the depot said the train might be here by nine or ten o’clock,” she reported. Her voice was strained as she went on. “Now, can I see my husband and son?”

Ike Winslow had surprised Garth by living through the night. In fact, even though he still hadn’t woken up, he seemed to be breathing easier and some of the color had come back into his face. The hombre might actually live, Garth thought.

Whether he would recover fully and ever be the same man he’d been before the injury was another question entirely. Garth didn’t care one way or the other about that, but as long as Winslow was alive, that meant the hold they had over Winslow’s wife was even stronger.

Since they might have only a day, maybe even less, before the train arrived to take Joshua on to Yuma, they had to act fast. But an open attack on the livery stable where the prisoner was being held would just result in more men lost, and the numbers had already shrunk a lot more than Garth liked.

Also, if they came riding into town with guns blazing, there was no telling how the citizens would react. Chances were, most of them would hunt for cover and lie low until the shooting was over. But some of them might get brave and join the fight. That could result in disaster, too.

Garth knew one thing he could always count on, though.

Greed.

So when he’d told Jeffries and Gonzalez what he wanted to do, they had thought it over and nodded. “Who are you going to send into town?” Jeffries had asked. “You can’t use the girl for that.”

“No, I reckon it’ll have to be one of us.” Garth looked at Gonzalez. “I’m thinkin’ about sendin’ you. We’re close enough to the border that nobody’s gonna notice one more greaser in town.”

Gonzalez didn’t take offense. He had been called much worse in his time. He nodded and said, “I can go to the saloon and tell the hombres there that somebody offered me a bounty if I helped bust into the livery stable. I can pretend that I turned it down.”

Jeffries rubbed at his chin. “You really think that folks will be willing to help free Joshua when just about everybody in the territory is afraid of him?”

“Make the money high enough and they will,” Garth declared. “I was thinkin’ about offerin’ a thousand dollars.”

Gonzalez let out a whistle. “That’s a lot of
dinero,
all right.”

“Of course, we won’t actually pay it,” Garth went on. “And when Joshua’s free, we’ll loot the town like always.” He looked around at the others. “Sound like a good plan?”

“It does,” Jeffries admitted.

“Head on into town,” Garth told Gonzalez. “Remember, though, you’re not an owlhoot. You’re just a driftin’ vaquero.”

Gonzalez nodded. “
Sí,
I can do that.”

He rode off, and Garth turned to the place in the shade of a cutbank where Winslow was stretched out with his wife and baby now beside him. Maggie held the little one like she never intended to let him go.

“All right, you’ve seen ’em,” Garth said to her. “You’d better get on back to town so’s you can keep an eye on things for us.”

“Please, just a little while longer,” she said as her arms tightened around the kid. “I’ve done everything you told me to do, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, you been pretty good about it,” Garth admitted. “But somethin’ could happen this afternoon that we need to know about.”

Maggie had used some of the money Garth had given her to buy a riding outfit. She was cute as she could be, he thought. Cute as a speckled pup, folks used to say. It fit her.

Garth ignored the pang of sympathy that went through him when he looked at her, though. He couldn’t afford feelings like that. He had to keep his attention fixed on the goal of freeing Joshua.

Like everybody else in the gang, Garth had been an owlhoot before joining up with Joshua Shade, but he’d never been a very successful one. That had all changed because of Joshua’s audacity and planning and leadership. Most folks probably thought Joshua was crazy, but Garth knew better. Joshua Shade was actually the smartest man Garth had ever known.

That was why they couldn’t take a chance on losing him. Garth motioned to Maggie Winslow and said, “Come on now. You got to go.”

She sighed, leaned over to kiss her unconscious husband on the forehead, and gave the young’un another hug. Then she stood up and handed him to Garth, taking the outlaw by surprise. Garth hung on to the kid, frowning.

“Take care of both of them,” Maggie said. “If you don’t…”

By Godfrey, was she
threatening
him? The gal had a lot of brass, Garth thought. More backbone than her husband, more than likely, which meant Ike Winslow was a lucky man…or at least, he would be if he survived.

Maggie mounted up and rode off, dust trailing from the hooves of her horse. Gonzalez was already gone on his errand. Now all Garth and the others could do was wait to see what happened.

“There’s bound to be a flag stop somewhere west of here,” Sam went on. “If we can get Shade out of here tonight without anybody knowing about it, we can flag down the train when it comes through there tomorrow and board it there.”

“We can’t move him in that wagon without folks seeing it,” Thorpe pointed out.

Sam shrugged. “We won’t use the wagon, unless it’s as part of a distraction so folks won’t know what we’re doing.”

“We can put him on horseback,” Matt said, eagerness showing in his voice as he grasped what his blood brother was talking about. “Stage some sort of ruckus to keep the town occupied and slip Shade out of here while that’s goin’ on.”

Thorpe looked back and forth between them. “Do you know how loco this sounds?” he demanded.

Matt and Sam both grinned. “We’ve been accused of bein’ a mite touched in the head before,” Matt admitted.

“But we’re still here when a lot of hombres have tried to put us in the ground,” Sam added.

“All right, I’ll listen,” Thorpe said with a sigh. “But I’m not making any promises about whether or not we’ll actually do it.”

“First of all,” Sam said, “we need to find out more about the railroad. We have to make sure the train will really be coming through tomorrow, and we’d better find out exactly where the next flag stop is.”

“I can do that,” Matt volunteered. He glanced at the gap between the shutters that were closed over the nearest window. The light that had been there earlier was fading. “It’s startin’ to get dark outside. I’ll head down to the depot and try to make sure not too many people see me.”

“All right, but don’t be gone long,” Sam said. “And be thinking about what we can to do throw everybody off the trail.”

Matt slipped out the back door, hearing Sam bar it securely behind him as soon as he was outside in the gathering twilight. From what Lopez had said, the cowboys who had a grudge against him for shooting Dub and Court were drinking in the saloon, stocking up on liquid courage. Their grudge against him, plus the bounty that had been placed on his head and the heads of those with him, would be enough to make the mob storm the livery stable, Matt knew, but it would probably take them at least a couple of hours to work themselves up to actually doing it.

That gave them a little time, Matt thought, to figure out what they were going to do—but they couldn’t afford to waste any time either.

As he swung around the corner of the depot and headed for the platform steps, he came to a sudden stop as he almost ran into someone leaving. A grin creased Matt’s face as he recognized Jessica Devlin.

“Well, good evening again, Miss Devlin,” he said. “Checking to see when the trains are gonna be runnin’ again?”

“That…that’s right,” she replied with a nod. “Is that why you’re here, Mr. Bodine?”

“Yep. You probably heard around town that some fellas and I are waitin’ to catch the westbound. We’re helpin’ out a federal marshal who’s got a prisoner to deliver to Yuma Prison.”

Matt didn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. It was common knowledge around Pancake Flats anyway.

“Yes, I’ve heard,” Jessica said. “Some sort of outlaw, isn’t he?”

“The worst sort,” Matt said, his expression growing solemn. “He’s a loco killer, a pure-dee hydrophobia skunk. And his gang is just as bad.”

“I…I wouldn’t want to cross paths with them then.”

“No, ma’am, you sure wouldn’t.”

Matt tugged on the brim of his hat and stepped around her. “I’ll be seeing you,” he said as he started toward the steps again. He had to get on with the errand that had brought him here.

He couldn’t help but glance at Jessica Devlin again, though. She definitely had a troubled look about her, and he wanted to do something to give her a hand if he could.

Unfortunately, he and Sam already had too much on their plates to be taking on any more problems. Matt hoped that whatever was bothering Jessica Devlin, she could figure it out for herself.

“Good news, Mr. Bodine,” Harry, the clerk, said before Matt could even ask. “I just got a wire saying that the repair work on the trestle is finished. The trains will be running again first thing in the morning. I expect the westbound to come through here at eight thirty. That’s even earlier than I’d hoped for.”

“Thanks,” Matt said with a nod. Harry didn’t know it, but eight thirty in the morning was going to be too late. “I’ve got another question.”

“Of course.”

“How far is it to the nearest flag stop west of here?”

Harry frowned. “Why do you want to know that?”

Matt hesitated. Harry seemed like a law-abiding gent, but evidently he hadn’t heard about the price the outlaws had put on the heads of the men holding Joshua Shade prisoner.

“Marshal Thorpe wanted to know. In fact, he wants a map of all the stops between here and Yuma, if you’ve got one.”

Harry’s frown deepened. “I do, but it’s the property of the Southern Pacific Railroad.”

“I’ll see that you get it back,” Matt promised. He didn’t know if he’d be able to keep that promise or not, but at least he’d try.

After a moment, the clerk shrugged. “All right, here.” He reached under the ticket counter and brought out a folded map. “You can let the marshal look at it. I’ll need it back before you leave town, though.”

“Sure,” Matt said as he took the map. This was working out even better than he had hoped.

He said so long to Harry and hurried back toward the livery stable. As he glanced up the street, he saw light spilling out of the saloon and heard loud voices drifting through the evening air from that direction. The mob was forming inside, and soon would spill out into the street like the light from the saloon’s lamps. Their goal would be the livery stable, where they hoped to collect that thousand-dollar bounty and Matt Bodine’s blood to boot.

Matt hoped that Sam had come up with something that would work, because he was sure as hell drawing a blank.